How Did I Get Here?

By Jane Marlow

Lives pivot on small moments, but which way they pivot is up to the person.
Jane Marlow's second book in her moving Petrovo Series is a powerful story of war told in intimate, human terms that will enthrall both male and female audiences.
Andrey enters his final year of medical studies in 1854 with an empty belly, empty pockets, and secondhand clothes hanging together by wishful thinking. When Russia blunders into the misbegotten Crimean War, Tsar Nicholas recruits medical students to the front, and Andrey grabs at this flash of good luck.
But his sanity is soon tested as he is forced to witness the most senseless and utter disregard for human life imaginable—where the death of a man holds no more significance than the death of a beetle. Andrey fears he is slowly becoming unhinged by the sound and feel of the relentless rasp of his saw against the mangled limbs of soldiers who have had no anesthesia.
​Eventually the guns stop firing, and the ink dries on the peace treaty, but the madness of war doesn’t end for Andrey. Can he stop seeking solace from the vodka bottle? Can he cease being a black well of bottomless cynicism? Can he begin to trust the woman who longs to walk beside him on his journey?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
• Release date: May 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781632991652

Book preview

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CHAPTER 1

November

1854

I NAB THE flea from my wrist, cleave the little scoundrel in half with my fingernail, then regret killing it so quickly. I should have tortured it.

But fair play is one of my exceedingly few strong suits, although God only knows how I came to possess such a virtue. To hold the flea accountable for my misery would be ethically wrong. The decision to place myself here—to travel, in my final year of medical school, to serve the Tsar’s military at the Crimean front—had been mine and mine alone. And I say that with the fiercest regret.

Idiot! The word blows through my lips. The shaggy peasant driving the wagon swivels about, seeking the target of his lone passenger’s vitriol. I ignore the shaggy peasant, consumed as I am with my internal flogging.

I never act impetuously. Never. Except that fateful moment two months and three days ago when my professor’s proposition shone like a beam of hope. I faced a decisive juncture and dove in headfirst.

I’m now in the nightmarish upshot of that rash decision. Railways being nonexistent south of Moscow, the army consigned a peasant with oxen and a wagon to haul me and a load of military supplies over the trampled earth that constitutes the roads to Sevastopol. I’m a mélange of blue and purple bruises from being tossed about in the bed of a springless wagon that reeks of its previous load of sour grain blended with pig feces. Every daylight hour, I sit jammed between packing cartons, my long legs folded like an accordion as we bump along kidney-bruising dirt roads that do their utmost to bounce my brain against the inside of my skull. Most of my time is spent in a stupor, numbed by vacant vistas broken only by sad little hamlets of no consequence.

The driver and I spend our nights in peasant barns, where I tussle with a smelly sheepskin blanket, its length only half that of my own, and share the dusty hay with droves of fleas. My fingernails are caked with blood from raking across fleabites. Meals are woefully inadequate, and I’m trying my darnedest to keep my galloping dysentery at bay. Hell, I signed up for this stint because I was half starved. Now I tie a rope about the waist of my trousers to keep them up.

THE FILTH-ENCRUSTED DRIVER and I have been together a little over a week when we arrive at the army encampment at Kursk, a provincial capital midway between Moscow and the Crimean Peninsula. With Russia beginning to pour its massive army into the Crimea, the formerly drowsy town has become overstuffed with regiments converging on the theater of war. Every donkey, mule, burro, camel, horse, ox, wagon, and bullock cart in the Empire seems to be traveling this road with us, all loaded to capacity in the Tsar’s warmongering service.

Saliva froths in my mouth at the thought that the army mess hall might serve up a warm meal. Warm meal? Ha! Turns out to be a virtual banquet! Hearty soup so thick with cream, it could hold a spoon upright. Dumplings in sour cream. Thick-sliced bread. Pickled gherkins. Stewed pears. Then a second serving of each, a third helping of pears. The mountain of food will doubtlessly have a romping fun time with my already dysenteric bowels. But that’s tomorrow’s problem.

Daybreak arrives inordinately early. I’m climbing back into my wagon when a grizzled, bantam-sized fellow emerges from amid the endless rows of newly erected white tents.

Zaitsev. He tosses his name up to me along with his canvas bag. Then he informs me that he is a physician and will be my traveling companion as far as the military post on the isthmus that connects the southern mainland of Russia to the Crimean province. After wedging himself among the stacked crates and chests, he gives me a once-over. You ain’t Pirogov, are you?

P-P-Pirogov? The esteemed name leaves me, a mere medical student, mouth-gapingly dumbstruck. You’re referring to Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov?

Could be the name. Supposed to be some grand and glorious physician. Rumored to be headed to the Crimea. All the army physicians—a bunch of bootlickers, every one of them—are tripping over themselves to meet him.

Pirogov! One of the most respected physicians in all of Russia! Receiving only a droopy-lidded gaze from Zaitsev, I proffer some details. "Author of Pathological Anatomy of Asiatic Cholera. And one of the first surgeons in Russia, if not the first, to use chloroform as an anesthetic."

Zaitsev heaves a humph and rolls a yellow-papered cigarette. You’re arriving at a good time. You missed the malaria season, and you’re too early for typhus. He squints at me. If you ain’t Pirogov, who are you?

Rozhdestvensky, I reply. Andrey Yevgrafovich Rozhdestvensky. Perhaps you could fill me in on what to expect when I reach Sevastopol? The kinds of wounds I’ll be treating? The latest techniques in limb amputations?

Don’t fret over the wounds, Rozhdestvensky. The minor ones heal themselves, unless they get maggots. Which, in the summer, they will. The fellows with bad wounds, they die. Simple as that. As for amputations … Zaitsev strikes a match on the sole of his boot and fires up his cigarette. For every ten I’ve done, nine gave up the ghost.

A ten percent survival rate? I take a deep swallow and redirect my questions. Do you prefer chloroform or ether as an anesthetic?

Neither. Zaitsev blows smoke toward the sky. The smart of the knife is a powerful stimulant. Helps keep the poor devils alive.

I’m at a loss as to how to respond.

Disease and pestilence, those are the real scalawags, he continues. Typhus in the winter. Asiatic cholera and putrid fever in the summer. I should know. He thumps his chest with his thumb, dumping ashes down the front of his greatcoat. Saw my first deadly fever in the swamps of the Caucasus in 1828. Cholera in the Polish campaign of 1831. Same story in ’49 when the Vomiting Death hit us in Hungary. Seen it all, scores of times.

His knobby forefinger motions me to lean closer. I divulge this next piece of information in strict confidence. The old geezer roves his rheumy eyes about the wagon, presumably looking for eavesdroppers stowed away among the army’s crates and bundles.

I’m quiet as the grave.

Those knuckleheads in St. Petersburg! He spits his disdain over the sideboards of the wagon. They’re sending women here.

Women at the front? You can’t mean as soldiers!

Hell, no! Zaitsev’s confidential whisper detonates into a boom. Supposedly as medical assistants. Imagine, women tending to sick men! I promise you this: for as long as you serve in the Tsar’s army, you’ll never see a single soldier with solid shit. Those women will take one look and, bah, they’ll run all the way home, holding their skirts with one hand and their noses with the other.

Your point is well taken.

Zaitsev sneers, flaunting his tobacco-stained teeth. Consider this, also. Why would a handful of women want to be with twenty-five thousand men? Only one reason: loose morals. Just picture the legions of syphilitics we’ll have to tend to once those jezebels spread their disease and pestilence.

Perhaps it’s just a false rumor?

I have my sources. The old physician nods with the wisdom of the ages. And the army’s making things worse with the food they’re serving. Did you notice the beef in the soup last night? Remember from your dietetics class, fleshy foods lead directly to systematic excitation of lust? That beef will incite drunkenness and then, after the hussies arrive, out-of-control libidos.

Sounds like a piece of medical wisdom you should share with the generals.

He brays like a donkey. It’s the generals who have the greatest carnal appetites. By the way—his index finger rises to rest crosswise under his nose—consider growing a mustache. It serves as a natural respirator, of obvious value in this malaria-cursed country.

THE FARTHER WE journey from Moscow, the more abysmal the roads become, slowing our travel to a nerve-wracking crawl. The irksome pontificator and I share meals of dried sausage, stale bread, salted cucumbers, and bitter green apples. At night, we continue to bed down in decrepit barns in nameless peasant villages, the ruthless ends of the hay turning my skin into a pincushion as Zaitsev snores with the vigor of a bull bellowing to a cow. At the rooster’s first crow, we’re once again bouncing along pot-holed roads, my stomach churning from the apples, and my head beginning its daily ache from the windbag’s blather. Every moment of every day I’m tempted beyond measure to pitch the nonsensical old-timer over the rickety sideboards.

My blue-tipped fingers tucked into the warmth of my armpits, I once again hotly curse my impulsive choice. With an overabundance of time to kill, my demented mind traces back to that decision, the first and only moment in my insipid life when I felt hopeful. I should have known better. Disappointment has never been more than a stone’s throw away.

CHAPTER 2

November

1854

MY CYNICISM ISN’T something I cultivated. Rather, it settled on me as a matter of course. Just as some families are notable for their stunning blue eyes, the Rozhdestvensky family is renowned for its grimness.

My parents had an unshakable conviction in Proverbs 13:24, One who spares the rod hates his son, but one who loves him is careful to discipline him. All six of their children were strictly and severely raised to be amenable to the ways of the family, the Church, and the Holy Sovereign. I was the youngest, and my two twin brothers took their cue from my parents, showering me with innovative insults. I learned that yes, indeed, words do hurt. As do cuffs to the back of my head.

For a while, trepidation was my constant companion. But inevitably, I grew too large to hide under the bed. So I switched strategies and simply stopped talking. As a result, my fifth year of life was spent with the embarrassment of nonstop hiccups.

I reached, oh, maybe seven years of age when I began taking for granted people’s false piety and ulterior motives. A shoulder shrug became my answer to almost everything.

During my early teens, my appearance also provided an easy target for mockery. To say I was of slender build was an understatement of epic proportions. My torso was as long and thin as an axe handle, with a chest so sunken, it gave the appearance of having been the target of a horse’s hoof.

To make matters worse, I am the son of a priest. Rather than joining the rough-and-tumble world of the neighborhood boys, I suffered a childhood cloistered behind the impenetrable walls of the Church. My playmates consisted of my three older sisters, who were only slightly more charitable toward me than were the twins.

In no manner of speaking am I implying I was a prude. Quite to the contrary, I inherited my father’s tendency to enjoy vodka to excess. And shortly after I sprouted pubic hair, I and the neighbor girl, Sonia Lepekhina, began spending countless hours in the church bell tower familiarizing ourselves with each other’s bodies.

At no point in my childhood did I feel safe. My God-fearing, family-fearing upbringing is perhaps best summed up with an illustrative story.

One of the many ecclesiastical duties assigned to us three brothers was the cleaning and refilling of the incense burner. Once, on the Feast of the Intercession of the Holy Mother of God, the task was somehow neglected. During Vespers, Father swung the chain of the censer, and nothing happened. No celestial smoke. Not a hint of heavenly fragrance. My father’s face reddened like a radish as he pumped more oomph into his swing.

The twins bolted to the sacristy, while I stood trembling. They located a tarnished, timeworn censer, added the charcoal, dumped in some incense, and meekly presented the dusty replacement to our humiliated father.

That evening, the twins, ever true to their pattern, conspired to pin the slipup on me. But Father didn’t fall for their cover-up. He positioned the three of us shoulder to shoulder and spooned hot incense onto the back of each of our left hands.

Never ever forget your obligations to God and to your parishioners!

How could we? The scars would be our daily reminder. As would every nauseating sniff of incense.

Even more forlorn than our upbringing was our future. The three of us brothers were destined to join the family lineage of priests.

Priests are buttonholed into the Russian caste system, just like the nobility, merchants, peasants, and so on, all of whom regard themselves as superior to us clerical dirt. The life of a cleric’s son plays out in a predetermined manner. First, he attends a parochial school, followed by the Church district school, and finally the seminary. Shortly thereafter, he marries the daughter of a cleric. The loving couple then beget more of the same, each offspring obligated to follow the same bleak footsteps.

The ensuing oversupply of clerics is so excessive, priests have to vie for positions. Even those fortunate enough to secure an entry-level position at some tumbledown rural church reap wages too meager for the cleric to support his family. But here’s the real rub: the priest’s holy vows forbid him or his family to earn supplemental wages outside their virtuous vocation.

The end result? Priests, out of necessity, developed a fail-safe strategy to augment their income.

Prayers for the sick? An upward palm is thrust toward the parishioner. A tin of tea.

Wedding? Two rubles plus vodka. Don’t have it? Then don’t get married.

Rare is the young man who enters the priesthood because of a divine calling. Nearly all join because they have no choice. I speak with the foremost authority when I say the outcome is an inert, moribund priesthood.

My three sisters were destined to fulfill their duty by marrying scantily paid priests. They craft their families’ meals from their kitchen gardens and clothe their children by raising and spinning their own wool, bound to a life not a pittance better than that of their husbands’ impoverished congregations.

The career path for us three boys was to attend a district boarding school for six years, then transfer to the seminary. As a youngster, I watched with mounting trepidation as the twins prepared to be thrust not only into an occupation contrary to their own preferences, but into a life devoid of respect, both from others and from themselves.

After my stint at boarding school, it was my turn to journey onward to the seminary. I packed my meager possessions and waved goodbye to my family, aware in my heart that I was permanently severing all ties with them. I walked out of our small town with shoulders pulled back in feigned confidence. But instead of heading to the seminary, I spent my few horded kopeks to secure passage to Moscow and its university.

Owing to a glut of priests and a paucity of physicians, sons of the clergy could legally pursue the medical profession, one of the very few options on an otherwise choiceless path. I managed to score decently in a couple of university classes and was admitted to the medical curriculum.

Having been sequestered from a normal childhood and adolescence, I was ill at ease with my classmates, and I shied away from their boisterous after-hours antics. I had grown into a gangly, loose-jointed fellow, the type of young man people customarily overlook. I did little except study, work, sleep, and eat, with damn few rubles available for the latter.

Then came that fateful September day in forensics class during my final year of medical studies, when I made an uncharacteristically abrupt decision.

AS I SLID into my seat that morning, I was so hungry I could have eaten a mule’s ear. Tingly barbs stabbed my thawing toes. With Moscow’s winter bearing down, I needed new soles for my only pair of boots, the uppers of which were a patchwork of repairs. And if I didn’t replace my threadbare jacket with a stouter coat, I’d surely come down with yet another bout of bronchitis.

For too long, I had robbed Peter to pay Paul, and I found myself at wit’s end. I was left with three choices. I could pay my share of the rent for the single-room dungeon I shared with four fellow students. Or I could clothe myself for the winter. Or I could eat.

This morning’s first announcement comes from your Tsar via his War Department. At the podium, a fleshy hand held the innocuous sheet of paper with lofty nonchalance. Russia’s escalating war on the Crimean Peninsula, the corpulent, gray-haired professor read, has an urgent need for medical personnel to serve our military forces. You are hereby given the opportunity to voluntarily replace your final year of studies with practical experience.

As best I recall, at that moment my stomach cut loose with a lengthy clamor for food. I wrapped my belly with my crossed arms, as if they would conceal the grumbling from the ears of nearby classmates.

The professor cleared the morning hoarseness from his throat. In exchange for serving our Motherland against the dissolute Turks and their co-conspirators, you would be provided with transportation to the front, plus food, shelter, and clothing. He adjusted the paper’s distance from his spectacles. Plus five rubles a month, and a full refund on your final year’s tuition.

I held my breath while he pushed his spectacles higher up on the bridge of his nose. In addition, you’ll gain exposure to military medicine. And you’ll benefit from the firsthand study of warm-weather diseases, such as malaria and the Crimean fevers.

The instructor lowered the paper and peered at his students. At the end of which, you will be granted your medical degree.

Free tuition. Wholesome food. Warm clothes. A more agreeable winter a thousand miles south of frozen Moscow. This announcement was the answer to my prayers. Except I never pray.

But there was another consideration, one that was difficult to put a precise finger on but was nevertheless impossible to ignore. The Crimean conflict offered free passage out of my vapid life.

Ahead of me lay the mouthwatering promises of the Crimean War. The Russian soldier was renowned for his bravery and endurance. Surely those intrepid attributes would rub off on me, firming both body and character. The Crimea was my portal to a new identity.

A rare, buoyant confidence surged through my bones as I signed the indecipherable military paperwork.

Yes, Andrey—courtesy of my childhood reclusion, I’ve honed the skill of holding informative, usually admonishing conversations with myself—you’ll return to Moscow not as a submissive youth, but as a man of mettle, toughened by the exertions of war.

Week after anxious week, I waited for the War Department in St. Petersburg to exchange paperwork with the university. Everyone knew the skirmish would last only a couple of months before the Russians (far and away Europe’s largest military power) chased the English and the French permanently off its Crimean Peninsula and out of the Black Sea. Wouldn’t it be just my luck if the whole fray ended before I ever stepped foot outside of Moscow?

To occupy my agitated mind, I scoured the maps at the university’s library to learn more about what I’d gotten myself into, such as where, exactly, is the Crimea. The shape of the peninsula in the Black Sea reminded me of a splotch of bird droppings with jagged edges. If it weren’t for the sliver of land that hitched it to the rest of the Empire, the land mass would be an island. Toward its south end lay the fabled naval base of Sevastopol, the site of the military action. The longer I perused the map, the deeper my brows knitted. Apart from Sevastopol, the province looked like ten thousand square miles of desolate hills sprinkled with a handful of insignificant villages.

After a month and a half, the university finally received the necessary military correspondence. I spread a moth-eaten blanket on my mattress, and in its center, I placed my few articles of clothing and a couple of handkerchiefs. Atop that, I set a comb, a razor, and a honing stone. My books were too heavy to carry. Better just to pawn them.

Last, I tossed in a deck of cards. Perhaps I’d meet someone who enjoyed the intellectually challenging game of skat.

After tying the blanket’s corners in a knot, I theatrically flung the totality of my possessions over my shoulder. With a giddy sense of adventure, I indulged myself with ill-defined visions of Crimean hills, of dark-eyed women, of life-saving surgeries. Andrey Yevgrafovich Rozhdestvensky, you stand at the threshold of a new life.

How quickly fantasies can be replaced by reality.

I’m cold.

I’m sick.

I’m broke.

I’m lonely.

I’m regretful.

I’m scared.

I have no idea where I am.

And I’m ready to strangle Doctor Zaitsev.

Fortunately for my blathering companion’s well-being, we finally reach his encampment, and I bid him adieu. My wagon is mercifully peaceful as it merges into the makeshift caravan of wagons and carts headed south across the isthmus and onto the Crimean Peninsula. I’ve been on the road just shy of three weeks, and a week’s journey to Sevastopol remains, barring any unexpected delays.

But wouldn’t you know, the weather turns downright mean, and bottomless mud slurries slow the convoy to a start-and-stop crawl. Even with a tarp draped over my head and shoulders, my thin jacket and tattered nankeen trousers are no match against battering wind and cold, bone-soaking rain.

During breaks in the rain, I join the driver on his wooden bench and watch the tails of the two oxen swish ceaselessly back and forth. I try to convince myself that things will look brighter in Sevastopol. However, the farther I venture onto the Crimean Peninsula, the deeper I sink in to an abyss of disbelief. Could the men, armament, and provisions of the world’s largest army really be moving like a giant trail of ants along scars etched in to the earth by wheels and hooves? And is the transport actually being carried out by road-weary wagons, wobbly peasant carts, bony oxen, and shaggy little ponies?

On the right-hand side of the so-called road, a wooden direction post tilts forlornly with the prevailing winds, informing me that we’re approaching the next unkempt Tatar village. Also alongside the road are a plethora of oxen carcasses in various stages of decay. To my left, a ragtag assortment of conveyances carries wounded soldiers north to the encampment on the isthmus, where they will be tended to by (Heaven help them) Doctor Zaitsev. Local people—lots of them, all with their animals and overflowing carts—are also headed north, away from Sevastopol. Are they fleeing? Fleeing from what?

Scattered amid the clogged mayhem in both directions are camels laden with produce that their dark-skinned, wild-looking owners will sell for eight to ten times the normal price. And whenever the rain lets up for even a few minutes, a squadron of angry green flies appears from nowhere.

Flea-bitten. Hungry. Filthy. Fighting dysentery. Deadened with cold and boredom. This isn’t the life-altering adventure I had bargained for. Not at all.

Andrey, you incomparable imbecile, you don’t belong here any more than a saddle belongs on a cow.

TWO DAYS SOUTH of the isthmus, as we creep toward the peninsula’s center, the impromptu convoy comes to yet another standstill. My teeth clench as I and the neighboring drivers and travelers once again slog through the boot-sucking mire, preparing to push aside a hobbled wagon, another victim of the logs and rocks that give the road its local flavor. The road’s edge had washed out, and courtesy of an oozy amalgamation of rain, mud, and animal excrement, the rear wheel slipped sideways into a small gully on the craggy hillside.

Crippled wagons along this road are as common as horse dung. What sets this one apart from the others is the half dozen women huddled beside it.

CHAPTER 3

November

1854

I APPROACH THE catawampus wagon, cold muck infiltrating my tattered boots and oozing between my toes. The women are clustered around a second conveyance, a two-wheeled peasant cart, inside of which lies another female. While the driver hurtles Greek curses at the mud-slick road, I and my fellow good Samaritans lighten the awry wagon of its load of suitcases, boxes, and barrels.

The women wring their hands as they console their injured companion. How badly does it hurt?

Oh, you poor dear.

We’ll get you to a doctor straightaway.

Well, Andrey, I dialogue with myself, didn’t you come to the Crimea for the purpose of performing doctorly deeds? As the men and oxen labor to replace the wagon in its rightful position in the road ruts, I summon the gumption to approach the women. Are you in need of a physician?

Sister Ivanova is injured!

She’s in pain!

She can’t breathe!

My eyes flick across the six faces. The women are in their late teens or early twenties, though age is difficult to judge, bundled as they are in cloaks, hats, and scarves. I’m without medical supplies, but I’ll do what I can.

Oh, would you please?

That would be so kind of you.

How fortunate you came along!

My cold hands grow moist with sweat. I’ve never had sole responsibility for a patient. Andrey, you impostor. Your aptitude falls far short of your bluster.

Pushing aside these self-deprecations, I ask the prone woman where she hurts. Grimacing, she points a gloved finger at the left side of her rib cage.

Would you mind opening your cloak so that I can examine you?

Beneath her cape is a long, brown garment, as formless as drapery. A bulky gold cross hangs from a wide ribbon around her neck. Are these the hussies who caused Zaitsev such indigestion?

As my hands prod and the woman flinches, I tentatively diagnose a cracked rib. But what if her spleen is ruptured? Or her liver? Or perhaps her stomach is twisted? No. Her cheeks are rosy, and her lips, although pinched, are a healthy pink. Those ailments don’t make sense, I reassure myself.

The covey of anxious women tightens like a corset around me, abetting my self-inflicted pressure to quickly reach a diagnosis. Eventually I almost fully convince myself that my original interpretation is correct.

I explain to the patient and the circle of ladies that simply remaining inactive for a couple of weeks will allow the rib to heal on its own. If you take shallow breaths, it will hurt less. However, I fear traveling over this bumpy road will be painful. Where are you headed?

Simferopol, six female voices answer in perfect unison.

From the library’s maps, I learned that Simferopol is the provincial capital, as well as the administrative headquarters of Russia’s Crimean Army. The city lies in the center of the bird poop splotch, approximately fifty miles inland from the naval port of Sevastopol.

Do you by chance have some bandage material? I ask the shivering women. If I wrap it snuggly about her ribs, her pain will ease somewhat.

The women bring forth a tattered blanket and tear off a long strip of wool.

I lower my eyes sheepishly. I need to apply it directly to her skin.

They do an about-face, their backs to the cart, their shoulder-to-shoulder semicircle creating an impenetrable haven for Sister Ivanova. When my fingers, stiff with cold and inexperience, complete the task, the women heap unending gratitude upon me.

Such a skilled physician!

A saint in disguise!

Bless you!

May we know your name? This question comes from a large woman, twice the girth of the others.

Andrey Yevgrafovich Rozhdestvensky.

In response, the women introduce themselves one by one. Their names go in one ear and out the other. Until I find myself peering into the bluest eyes imaginable.

Sister Vasilisa Stepanova Abramova. She offers me a slight curtsy and a demure smile.

So ensnared am I by her dark-lashed eyes and melodic voice, I forget the final Sister is waiting to greet me.

How grand that you came along at just the right moment.

I tear my gaze from the blue-eyed beauty to see the last Sister—the large one who had initiated this parley of name sharing—extending her hand boldly in the Western style.

Sister Maria Ivanovna Kurbatova.

Her grasp is so strong, I grit my teeth to keep from flinching. Kurbatova is of medium height, oxen bones, and hefty flesh. Her pudgy, gloved fingers remind me of sausages with overstuffed casings.

I’m pleased to make the acquaintance of each of you, I say, letting my attention drift back to the jeweled eyes. May I ask …? You call yourselves Sisters. Are you nuns?

No, we’re Sisters of Mercy. The words pass between the impossibly full lips of Sister Vasilisa Stepanova Abramova. We’re on our way to be of assistance at the hospitals.

Perhaps we shall see you there, says the large Sister. What was her name?

I wish that were true. However, I’m stationed at Sevastopol.

The corners of the brawny woman’s lips turn up whimsically, as if she has a secret she intends to keep to herself. One never knows. Perhaps our paths will cross.

I bow to the group as a whole. Let us be diligent in seeking out those paths.

As I walk away, expressions of gratitude trail after me. But these words of appreciation are smothered by my own ruminations about Vasilisa Stepanova Abramova.

CHAPTER 4

November

1854

OVER THE NEXT few days, while the weather fluctuates between damp-cold and wet-cold, my unchaste thoughts about Sister Abramova steadily heat up. The hint of mischievousness behind her sedate curtsy. The provocativeness of her beguiling eyes. The possibilities lurking beneath her dreary, shapeless habit.

Andrey, listen to me. You must, YOU MUST get reassigned from Sevastopol to Simferopol.

The clouds hang low like dirty fleece. Their chilly drizzle soothes my forehead, which throbs from the wagon’s continuous pitching. As I sit on the bench beside the driver, my gaze mindlessly latches on to the repetitive to-and-fro of the rusty bucket that dangles beneath the military wagon ahead of us.

When the tedium becomes more than I can bear, I